At the Guardian, Andrew Brown takes a look at some Robert Spencer and Pamela Geller’s European links, noting the views of Anders Gravers of Stop Islamisation of Europe, Geller’s support for the English Defence League, and Spencer’s association with Douglas Murray. Last year’s dinner fiasco is raised:

Spencer was invited to supper by Murray of the Centre for Social Cohesion when he visited England last autumn, only for the evening to break up before it had even started when a bunch of EDL skinheads turned up at the restaurant, invited along by a supporter of Spencer who was making a video about him and had been interviewing them, too. The difference between the EDL and the various “Stop Islamisation of [your country here]” on the one hand, and the Centre for Social Cohesion on the other, while obvious to Murray, does not seem to have occurred to the American videomaker.

This was an incident I blogged on at the time. (The videomaker was Martin Mawyer, an anti-gay Christian fundamentalist. Spencer and Geller maintained that Mawyer’s views on homosexuality were his own affair, although they changed their minds and acted shocked when his views reached Dutch media and embarrassed Geert Wilders.)

Further:

Spencer was the subject of a fulsome interview in the Catholic Heraldin 2007, which was, in turn, plugged by Damian Thompson in the Daily Telegraph; Thompson was then the Herald’s editor-in-chief, and now is a leader writer on the Telegraph. “Major bookstores, gutlessly, refuse to stock Spencer’s work,” wrote Thompson then, “so here is a link to his main titles…

Thompson and I quarrelled, terminally, whenI criticised himfor reprinting without checking another Spencer-linked story about a mob of Muslims closing down a hospital in Sydney, which turned out to originate from the imagination of a neo-fascist group there. He hasn’t spoken to me since. Neither, though, has he used anything from Spencer on his blog. It looks as if some of the respectable English right has learned its lesson, but in America, Spencer and Geller are still taken seriously.

10 Responses

However, Spencer does document the criminal aspects of the life of Muhammad from Sahih Hadithic sources (eg sex with Ayesha when she was 9), Massacre of surrendered POWs at Banu Qurayza and the Verses of the Sword in the Qur’an far better than his critics.

Just as there are violent verses in the Bible which Jews and Christians say do not apply today, Muslims need to state that the violent verses in the Quran and the warlike examples from Muhammad’s life are not for imitation today. Instead most just scream ‘Islamophobia’ when this mentioned.

It is physically dangerous to criticize or mock Muhammad it is not physically dangerous to mock Jesus or the Buddah.

To Richard Bartholomew: I would appreciate it very much if you could help publicize two Upcoming counter-protests against recent anti-mosque protests

Every last one of the 57 Muslim-majority states have laws that severely discriminate against ALL religious minorities.And Islam itself is headquartered in a religious-apartheid hell-hole that forbids the practice of any other religion except Islam. Those caught doing so are severly punished and imprisoned.

Since you’re so ( apparently) concerned for the rights of religious minorities, then why haven’t you and your organisation done anything to highlight this horrendous and unjust situation?

Why no takers to champion such blatant discrimination and injustice? Isn’t that what progressives are supposed to do?

There are already over a hundred mosques in New York city alone, including two within just blocks of the proposed G.Z. project, and yet in the Muslim world, even in those countries considered moderate, getting permission to just repair an older church or temple, let alone to build a new one, is next to impossible.

You champion religious bigots and intolerant, medieval, Saudi- financed religious obscurantism, all the while righteously ignoring the real victims of religious descrimination.

If international Christian religious bodies, or other international groups, were to work on pressuring the governments of Muslim-majority countries to become more religiously pluralistic, I would have no problem with that. But that’s not a reason for Western countries to mistreat the Muslims in our own midst.

Immigration does not equal military invasion. And the medieval battles you speak of occurred at a time when Christian countries were WORSE than Muslim countries in their treatment of religious minorities. Of course, that’s no longer true, at least here in the West..

My own group is focused more on opposing bigotry here in the U.S.A. than overseas. (Why? Because religious bigotry here in the U.S.A is both easier to overcome and, at the same time, more likely to be a danger to people whom we personally know.) However, opposing religious bigotry overseas IS certainly a valid concern, too, and we would be happy to endorse genuine efforts against it. If indeed opposing religious bigotry overseas is YOUR concern, why don’t you work on that, rather than using it to justify mistreating people here in the U.S.A.?

My own group is focused more on opposing bigotry here in the U.S.A. than overseas. (Why? Because religious bigotry here in the U.S.A is both easier to overcome and, at the same time, more likely to be a danger to people whom we personally know.)
Cute. Opposing religious bigotry, for al there is of it, in America is risk free and allows you to engage in much moral preening without incuring the least danger.

If indeed opposing religious bigotry overseas is YOUR concern, why don’t you work on that, rather than using it to justify mistreating people here in the U.S.A.?

I make no distinction between domestic and overseas religious dsicrimination, because the principles of religious freedom are enshrined in a UN Human Rights Charter that has been signed by most of the world’s nations.

Now back to ( the mostly mythical) domestic Islampophobia. I commented above that there are already 100 mosques in New York City.

Well, I was mistaken; there are, in fact, more than TWO HUNDRED of them.

[…] 14. The following articles from 2010 and 2011 briefly mention Douglas Murray’s links to Robert Spencer, although it’s unclear if the Guardian authors were aware of the full scale of Murray’s direct involvement with the Spencer cabal: See here, here and here. […]

[…] 14. The following articles from 2010 and 2011 briefly mention Douglas Murray’s links to Robert Spencer, although it’s unclear if the Guardian authors were aware of the full scale of Murray’s direct involvement with the Spencer cabal: See here, here and here. […]

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Note on Attacks

Anyone who comments on current affairs on-line risks being smeared by attack sites and/or abusive Tweets. This is particularly so if one chooses to challenge dishonesty or other kinds of reprehensible behaviour.

As a result of making a stand in a few particular instances, I have become the focus of a number of such attacks. Those who have targeted me include: a Nigerian evangelist who believes in “child witches”; former activists with the EDL; a man with a long history of bad debt and grandiosity; a sockpuppeting tabloid journalist; and a self-serving “celebrity” MP who deploys smears to discourage scrutiny.

The bad faith of such sites and Tweets ought to be self-evident. However, any readers interested in the true background can read this and this.